The Pit of Despair: How God, Prayer and the 12 Steps Saved My Life from Addiction

By Lisa Jo Barr

• Features interactive, heartfelt prayers that deepen readers' spiritual connection, fostering a unique reading experience 
• Normalizes the experience of addiction as a disease rather than a moral failing, helping to dismantle societal stigma and promoting the release of toxic shame 
• Offers practical tools and advice for crafting powerful prayers, appealing to both individuals in recovery and Christian prayer warriors
• Serves as a compelling reminder to addicts that they are not alone
• Educates Christians about how 12 Step Programs help people and can bring them closer to God
• Will appeal to fans of successful recovery memoirs like Beautiful Boy by David Sheff and Smacked by Eilene Zimmerman

• Language: English
• Publisher: Morgan James Faith
• Release date: Jun 11, 2024
• ISBN: 9781636983134

Lisa Jo Barr

Lisa Jo B. is a survivor and advocate, who has courageously overcome addictions to substances and behaviors such as cocaine, food, nicotine, sex, and love. Since her transformative journey began in 2007, she's been an active participant in 12-step recovery programs. She is the author of several compelling articles, columns, and OP-EDS that have been published in numerous magazines and newspapers around the world.  A committed Christian, Lisa Jo credits her faith in Christ for her profound personal healing and for her perseverance in the face of adversity. Leveraging her expertise gained from five years working in the mental health field, she is deeply passionate about aiding others on their journey to recovery. Lisa Jo lives in Denver, Colorado, where she serves as a living testament that healing from the profoundest depths of despair is possible.

Book preview

Introduction

I lay face down in the mud. I was dragged all over town, day and night, until I passed out. I’d swear, just before losing consciousness, to never do it again. Ever. Then the following day I would find myself face down in the mud again, swirling in the vicious cycle of addiction and shame, endlessly repeating itself. Spiritually bankrupt, the only thing that mattered in my life was getting high. There was no room for anything else.

This is not only part of my story but is the bleak reality for millions of suffering addicts from all over the world. The drug of choice doesn’t matter. It could be drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, work, shopping, food or video games. You name it. A global epidemic, addiction is a behavior or consumption that is used over and over again by a person to numb out or escape discomfort, even when the consequences are harmful and all consuming.

No matter how dark and disconnected an addict’s life becomes, some are given the gift of desperation. For these addicts things get so bad, they hit a bottom and decide they cannot continue living the insanity of active addiction. Their first prayer is, God, help me. There is hope for those reaching out to God with prayer. In my journey, hope and redemption came in the form of a design for living that includes connecting with God and other recovering addicts by working the 12-step program.

Around the clock, thousands upon thousands of recovering addicts meet together anonymously in 12-step meetings, going around the room sharing their stories, feelings, experience, strength and hope. They open and close the meetings with The Serenity Prayer.

Addicts, who were once spiritually bankrupt, learn how to rely on God. They begin to take responsibility for their lives and to know they cannot operate successfully on self-will alone. The greatest spiritual experience in an addict’s life is to discover, develop and deepen a relationship with God. This comes from talking to God through a process known as prayer.

I attended my first 12-step meeting in 2007, placing a dangerous life-threatening addiction to sex and cocaine into recovery. I have experienced a cornucopia of addictions--to cigarettes, food, sex, love, and cocaine. By the grace of His Holiness, through my ever-growing conscious communication and relationship to God, meditation, therapy, and working the 12-step program, I have experienced a deep healing and continue to live a happy, fulfilling and purpose-filled life, one day at a time.

My experience, strength and hope is weaved throughout this book along with prayers I’ve written. You are cordially invited to participate. The prayers are presented in both singular and plural forms so that you can say them alone or together out loud with friends, family or fellows in the program.

Many folks who are addicted don’t know what to say to God because they have lived in isolation and disconnection for so long. Mark Dejesus, author of The Heart Healing Journey, writes that one reason we don’t pray is because we don’t know what to say to God. This book will help you get comfortable speaking to God through the conversational tone and ease of these prayers. They are steeped in the familiarity of the 12-step language and speak to God as if we have a living, friendly and warm relationship with Him; something we can all attain if we keep praying and listening.

I have a chapter giving you tips and suggestions on how to write your own powerful customized prayers, to find your own words to praise and thank God.

The purpose of this book is to inspire you to talk to God in order to deepen your trust and faith in Him and to jumpstart your prayer life in order to live a quality of recovery beyond your wildest dreams.

How to Use this Book

In the table of contents and in the index at the back of the book, you can find a list of all the different prayers I’ve written along with their page numbers and what they are about. I’ve written prayers related to the steps, tools and ideas that are related to the 12-step program. The prayers come from my heart.

Pray by Yourself or Pray with Others

The prayers are in the I version, or singular, so you can say them out loud by yourself and are also written in the we version, or plural, so that you can pray them together with another person or as a group.

Toward the end of the book is a chapter on how to write your own prayers. I give you my insight and my experience on my process and how you can write your own powerful prayers, plus examples.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: I am not an authority speaking on behalf of any 12-step fellowship, or on how the steps should be worked. Steps and the personal experience of doing so are as unique to the individual. Kind of like snowflakes. Each person experiences their recovery journey differently. We all have our own individual experience.

My book is humbly my experience through the horrors of active addiction to the healing and redemption of my soul through my relationship with Christ. This is merely my experience, strength and hope along with my journey with Christ.

Chapter 1:

Powerlessness

O our God, will You not judge them? For we are powerless before this great multitude who are coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are on You.

2 Chronicles 20:12 (NASB)

Addiction infiltrated my soul and held my sexuality hostage.

It corrupted and confused me, and without Christ’s salvation, I would not have been able to get out of the tangled web alive. The disease had me suspended and stuck in a rut of doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. God was always present even though I had shut the door on His Ever-Loving Presence that later gave me the power to forgive, move past hurting myself, and see and treat myself as the child of the Most High God that I truly am.

Nobody becomes an addict on purpose. I didn’t hurt myself deliberately. Addiction is a disease. I did not wake up one day, and, just for kicks, decide to flush my life down the toilet time and again. I did not just make progress in recovery, only to relapse–to go back in the river of filth, drowning in a gutter, starving spiritually. I was not a bad person, nor was I weak. As a matter of fact, us addicts are some of the strongest people I know on the planet and certainly the most focused. After all, for decades, we only had one thing to live for with a razor-sharp focus: our drug of choice.

In my life, I became addicted to substances and behavior. I was addicted to sex, cocaine, cigarettes, love addiction (or infatuation/obsession with men) and compulsive overeating. No matter what addiction was active at a given time, it was always pure hell 24/7. If I was using, then I was suffering.

All addiction is self-medication. I used these substances and behaviors as numbing agents, an escape from tremendous emotional pain and from feeling any discomfort whatsoever. At the extreme, I even used drugs as an alternative to killing myself, when I had reached rock bottom with my mental health. I used addiction to mask severe depression that was a symptom of the chemical imbalance of Bipolar I and the horrendous emotional flashbacks of Complex PTSD. The more overwhelmed or depressed I got, the more I increased the dose of my drugs in order to get the same effect. At the same time, I found myself chasing after a higher high.

The disease of addiction was progressive. When you go back to using after a period of sobriety, the disease merely picks up where it left off and quickly gets worse. It’s as though it’s in the parking lot doing push ups, lurking and waiting for me to rest on my laurels, drawing me back to slipping and falling into this horrendous lifestyle of active addiction once again.

I believed in God for a couple decades, but never felt close to Him until I was at a Buddhist Temple in Bangkok at the age of 25. I was waiting 3 hours for my train to depart to Chiang Mai up north. With luggage in hand, I took a taxi to the first Buddhist temple I could find. I loved the big gold Buddhas, their tranquil expressions, the smell of incense and the peaceful solitude away from the whizzing traffic. There was a sheltered open-air temple that drew me in. I was standing outside and staring into the brightly lit temple, with hundreds of candle flames dancing and big pillowy clouds of incense rising to the sky.

No one was around except stray dogs that had sores all over their bodies. All of a sudden, I heard a clear still voice say to me, Dearest child, I have been here all along. You have never been alone. I’ve been by your side ever since you were born.

I instantly knew who it was. It was God. I started crying and crying, buckled over with overwhelming joy.

The stress of loneliness left every cell of my body just then, for a moment that felt like an eternity. It was as if all of me knew that God will always be with me, even if I turn my back from Him. My loneliness vanished for a long period. This shift and the warm awareness that God was with me, made me cry so hard that tears were streaming down my face, hitting the pavement. I cried so much that I could barely catch my breath. What I experienced was a miracle of God’s Love.

God went on to speak to me as I sat down on a concrete step, I want you to get out of all of those groups you are in.

And I did.

What God was referring to was the two metaphysical cults I belonged to. I went to their meetings and read their books, performed magic which was basically getting lost in smoking mirrors. I tried to make things happen on self-will alone. I thought that I could change life on life’s terms. I studied all the metaphysics that I could get my hands on, looking and searching for something bigger than myself, searching for God, but not knowing His name. I did not find Him there. Dabbling in metaphysical muck put me in a lot of danger–physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally. It definitely dysregulated me emotionally.

When I got home from my Thai trip, I sold all my witchcraft and occult books. I watched one of these group members haul a bunch of my books away in a shopping cart down the sidewalk. I stood there and the darkness left me.

Cults are dangerous groups disguised as light. They are shrouded in deception and manipulative darkness. Places full of people idolizing themselves or others. These people were trying so hard to play God. They worshiped false idols, worshiped themselves at times and worshiped others. Even as some of the cult members threatened me for leaving, God covered me in His light and protection. God was with me all along and turned it all around for me.

I was not raised in any religion. My father, who grew up Jewish, was a narcissistic agnostic who constantly made fun of religious people. He was suspicious of them and did not allow my mom, who was Southern Baptist, to take us to church. So, I grew to fear religion and went around as an angry teen saying that religion leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Looking back though, Christ was with me and spoke to me gently and firmly on my Thai trip. God took my hand and cradled me in His Love. For a moment, I felt at ease. The war was over. I was a soldier that had been fighting for so long. My Creator’s everlasting, unconditional love felt so right, whole, complete.

Whenever I relapsed, the dire consequences surfaced and the more sick I became. Active addiction always gave me amnesia. It made me forget all about God being there by my side. I had taken God off the throne and was worshiping the false idols of addictive substances and compulsive behaviors instead. God had not moved. I had moved. But it was He who redeemed me, saved me from the madness through working the 12 steps.

My story is not an easy one to tell, so I wrote a prayer that I said before I sat down to write this book. It helped anchor me and grow my faith that I could do it.

Writing My Story Prayer

God,

Grant me the endurance and the strength to write. Show me Your Power moving through me, with the gift of writing that You gave me so generously.

Let the words come to me. Let the organization fall into place. This book–my work of art, branded by my creativity, my personality, my journey. This testimony is our Masterpiece, God, with Your Divine Guidance working through me, in safety and enjoyment, with pen and paper and fingers tapping on keyboards. My feelings are not facts, yet they are used as paint to express my emotional stories captured in words. Guide me, Jesus, from tripping over my past. Propel me to glide into the present.

Let me act on the courage to write a word. A sentence. A paragraph. A chapter. A book.

Help me. Dear Lord, to bring writing into more of my time–into my life more vividly and regularly. God, help me to sink deeper into my true love of putting words down on paper. Reconnect me with the powerful tools of language and story. I feel the courage in my heart to explore and express Your Glory in the pages of this book.

Keep me safe from scary memories, Heavenly Father.

Guide me to do Your Will.

In Jesus’s Name I pray.

Amen

Powerlessness

My innocence was lost when I was molested as a child by an uncle who babysat me while my parents went to a Neil Diamond concert.

When I was 13, my rageaholic father called me a whore and accused me of doing drugs. I hadn’t picked up anything yet and I was still a virgin. In high school, when the drugs were offered to me, I figured that my dad already thought I did it, so why not. When sex presented itself, I also felt this caved-in defeat right at my heart, so I didn’t fight the invitation. I used sex as a substitute for love. I needed to be needed.

I started having sex at age 14 with much older guys. Sex seemed, from the very beginning, to be insatiable, yet manageable at first. It was a progressive disease.

I met Mark one hot summer night on a dancefloor at an all-age nightclub called After the Fox. The song Into the Groove by Madonna came on and my friends and I all ran up at once to move to this catchy new song. From across the dance floor, I felt his eyes gazing upon me. Mark was a tall, dark and handsome man. He danced beautifully to the music. He made his way through the crowd, all while looking me in the eyes. Without saying a word, his hands entwined with mine and we moved together, in perfect sync. I had never felt so high from a mere touch of the hand. He smelled good too as he held me tight on the dancefloor, tighter as the song ended. He introduced himself.

He was a 19-year-old and still lived with his parents. During our telephone calls, I told him all about the violence and emotional abuse I continued to endure from my father. He offered to help me run away from home.

So I did.

The night before, I put pen to paper. I knew if this journey I was about to embark on didn’t work, I’d have to kill myself. I was not coming back here. I had an uneasiness that it was going to be near to impossible to run away from my father. He had a way of manipulating, getting information out of my friends and hunting me down. So I wrote a suicide note expressing all my hurt and that I was desperate to leave the violence behind even if it meant ending my life.

That morning I met Mark and he helped me move some stuff out of my house, including the Fender electric guitar my father had given me after not learning how to play it himself. I wanted to bring all the music with me. It was my only salvation at the time. The only thing that made me feel safe. Music. I had the album War by U2 memorized and it got me through many nights of fighting like a soldier. It gave me strength. When nobody was home, I’d blast it and sing along to every word. Siouxsie and the Banshees also became part of my soundtrack to that era. Memorizing every song as I pedaled away on a stationary bike in my parent’s basement, blasting music when they weren’t home. Singing and yelling the lyrics.

After moving my stereo into a friend’s house, up three flights of stairs, Mark drove us across town, listening to Voices Carry on the radio. I told him to turn it up to drown out my thoughts. I was very anxious about this whole thing. He snuck me into his parents house before they came home from work. Mark and his father went to McDonald’s while I lay on his floor on the other side of his bed, away from his door, listening to his mother washing dishes. He brought me French fries half an hour later. That night, I slept in his bed. When we kissed for the first time, it was like I was free falling down an elevator shaft. I was instantly in love. I had never felt that before.

Within a few months, we were having sex. The more we had it, the harder I fell in love with him. I confused sex with love from the very beginning. All I wanted was to be loved.

I became obsessed with Mark. I put him on a pedestal where he could do no wrong. I called him constantly, desperate to reach him. When I did, we would talk and I’d fill up with being wanted. As soon as we hung up, the emptiness would come flooding back. I couldn’t get him off my mind. There were many times I showed up at his home and his work uninvited. I just couldn’t stop thinking